Spooky Taco Bell Ghost (1k words)

Author's Note:

Well, once again I come to you hat in hand, having not finished the chapter of Two Doms I'm working on. I'm sorry! I'm 6k words in so far, and it's gonna be a good one I swear. It'll definitely be out before the end of the month, I promise I'm not scamming you.

In the meantime please accept another silly nonsense short as a proof of life.

On Wednesday I had Taco Bell for lunch. I got the nachos, which honestly, I kind of feel embarrassed when I get the nachos. When you go to Taco Bell, you’re meant to get a Crunchwrap Supreme, or a Cheesy Gordita Crunch, or something else with a silly name so people know that you know you’re in a Taco Bell. If you just order the nachos, you can feel people looking at you, like, does she think she’s eating real Mexican food right now? 

On Thursday Ben died. 

On Friday I had Taco Bell for lunch again. I got a Crunchwrap Supreme this time, because I was still pretty shaken up after the Ben thing, and I couldn’t handle feeling self-conscious on top of it all.

On Saturday I died. Which was kinda nice, cause I got to see Ben again.

“Where do you think you’re gonna haunt?” said Ben. 

“I don’t know,” I said, “I haven’t really thought about it.”

The guys were still cleaning up my body. They already got all the big bits, and now they were just cleaning up the smears. Red and brown and green. I didn’t know there was that much green in me. You don’t see green in horror movies, when people get chopped up or splattered. And that’s horror movies, you know? Like it’s deliberately meant to be scary and gross, and even then they don’t put as much green in them as I have in real life. I wanted to apologise to the cleaning guys, but they couldn’t hear me. 

“You gotta haunt somewhere,” said Ben, “If you don’t haunt somewhere, you can’t do anything. You don’t have a connection to the physical realm. Look.”

He scrunched up his face, and the lights flickered. 

“I can do that because I haunt here,” said Ben, “If you don’t haunt anywhere, you can’t do stuff like that.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, “I’ve only been a ghost for, like…”

I glanced at the clock, but Ben scrunched up his face again and the hands went round and round really fast.

“Can I just haunt here?” I asked.

Ben shook his head, “I already haunt here.”

“But it’s my apartment.”

“I know, that’s why I was gonna haunt it. So I could pine after you for all of eternity.”

“Oh,” I said. The way he said it made it sound romantic, but I knew Ben, and I knew the kind of stuff he was into, and I was pretty sure at least part of his motivation was actually because he knew I was, eventually, probably going to start dating someone else. And then Ghost Ben could sit in the corner of the room, invisible, and, like, flicker the lights. Which was fine, honestly, if he was into that. But he could just say that then, you know? Like, it wasn’t fair for him to act like he was being a total martyr about it. 

“Maybe I’ll haunt the church,” I said.

Ben laughed, “You don’t think the church is booked up? There’s probably a hundred ghosts in that church. That’s why the pipe organ doesn’t work anymore. Clogged up with ghosts.”

“I feel like I have a pretty good claim to the church,” I said, “That church fucked me up as a kid.”

“That won’t do it,” said Ben, “If you want to haunt a church, or a school, or, like, a creepy old burnt down building, you need to get in so quick. The only reason I managed to get in here is because this building is new. And cause we got that zumba gym downstairs. Nobody wants to haunt a zumba gym. Doesn’t feel cool.”

One of the cleaning guys walked through him, holding a big bucket of green stuff. I wanted to look at it, to try and figure out what it was, but I didn’t want Ben to see me looking at it. Maybe he hadn’t noticed how much green stuff was in me, or maybe it was actually a normal amount of green stuff, and if he saw me being weird about it, he would think I had unrealistic expectations about how much green stuff people were meant to have in them. And that wasn’t fair, because it’s not like I would ever judge anyone else for having a bunch of green stuff in them. I just didn’t know if I had, like, the wrong amount. 

“Maybe I can haunt one of the other apartments,” I suggested.

Ben’s eyes lit up, “Like an apartment that some other guy lives in?”

“I’m going for a walk,” I said. 

Ben was right about the church. It was packed. There were more ghosts in there moping about being fucked up than I had ever seen actual parishioners in there as a kid. And the fire station was full too, and the town hall, and all the nice parts of the historic downtown. There was a park near my parents' house that had this broken down old steamroller that had been dragged over there, and painted red and green, and surrounded by wood chips so that kids could fall off it without breaking their necks. There were like four ghosts on that thing, including a kid with a broken neck. I was starting to wish I had died way sooner. 

By the time it got dark I was back at the Taco Bell. I don’t know why. I was still thinking about the green stuff, I guess, and that made me think of guac. I spent like a minute waiting for someone to set off the sliding door before I realised I could just go through the glass. 

There was a woman standing at the touchscreen, even though the guy at the counter was wide open. It looked like she had been there for a while.

“You can get the nachos,” I said, knowing she couldn’t hear me, “You’re not stupid.”

Maybe it was just coincidence, but I could swear the lady straightened up a bit. She ordered the Crunchwrap Supreme, but it felt like she actually wanted it.

“You’re doing a good job,” I said.